Thursday, November 27, 2014

Juniper smoke


If the smoke gets
in your clothes
and your eyes keep
me warm
and the moon like ash
rises
into cold and careless
space
will the embers linger
longer
than our eyes will
remain open
or will our love
be like dying
in juniper smoke.


For David and Sarah

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Tea Project - Lawrence Arts Center



Not everything goes together like tea and sugar.
A soldier back from Iraq served me hot tea
and sugar in a ceramic cup
where I sat,
the cups lined up on wooden racks
reminiscent of the Styrofoam cups
decorated by detainees in places
like Guantanamo.
He and others had made a cup
for every detainee,
he and others talked about
thousands or more, I was distracted
by girls in their dancing tights
slipping around and behind
and up the stairs to their class.
There was solitary and torture
and innocence, lost on me
as the afternoon sun came through tall windows
from behind me where I sat in the listening crowd
and me,watching the sunwashed white wall above.
I did not see the girl on the walkway
overhead, but then there came silently dancing
a shadow on that bright wall.
I lost count how many cups were mentioned,
one sat empty at the foot of my chair
still with a sip of tea and sugar gone cold.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Beauty or Coincidence?





I have a friend, younger than me. She made some flowers out of tree leaves. Somehow she spiraled the leaves together, putting them into a vase. She said that I could do it.

I begged off with an excuse of laziness, or something.

Then, yesterday, I needed to go the store and get a few things for supper. I took the long way – walking by way of Veteran’s Park near the high school. I crossed over 19th street and was heading down 20th when I saw the most amazing tree. It was almost entirely bright yellow, holding on to nearly all of its leaves. Of course, I believe in coincidences – they happen. My friend lives just a half block to the north on Vermont and I thought to myself, maybe I could make a leaf flower.

I began picking leaves. Their stems let go with a slight tug. I kept the stems together, leaves flat together like the pages of a book. I began with yellow, then I saw some leaves just turning red, and then, I saw some with bright green still in them. It was the yellow that made the green seem so bright, I think.

I carried my sheaf of leaves with me, carefully holding them together. I cradled some cans of pineapple and also a dozen eggs in one arm as I wandered through the aisles at Dillons, shifting things around carefully so I could get to my wallet to pay.

I sat for a moment on a ledge outside, watching the people come and go. Then I headed home with my bag in one hand, the leaves in the other. A neighbor waved at me from their house a block from my house and I crossed the street. She and her daughters were reading on a blanket on the grass. I saw colored leaves printed on the open pages of a picture book. The mother said that a cold front was coming. It was indeed quite warm for November. I showed them my leaves and then continued toward home. It was time to get supper started.

Then, just before I got to our house, another neighbor was coming towards me on the sidewalk, kicking though the leaves with her two daughters and her two dogs. We stopped and I explained that I was going to try to make a flower with the leaves in my hand.

One daughter told me that then I was going to give it to my wife because I love her. Well, she would know.

I set my bag in the kitchen and did the flower first. A wine glass wasn’t quite right, the mouth too big. I found a narrow-stemmed juice bottle in the stairwell with the vases, the top opening  about the size of a penny. I stuck the stems of the leaves into the opening as I sat at the dining room table. I tried to swirl the leaves. Then I pulled them carefully back out, sticking back into the bottle a few leaves at a time – yellow in the center, a splash of the red, and the green around the outside.

It wasn’t as tightly spiraled as my friend’s flowers were, but it had a nice shape and I was pleased with how the colors came out. It was pretty enough for a picture and then the dining room table.

If you are wondering, I made sweet and sour pork, and I have to tell you that I used three farmer’s market bell peppers – one green, one red, and one in between green and red. The pineapple - from the can - was, was of course, bright yellow. Sweet and sour I had planned on.

My wife - who I love, as my very young friend reminded me - came home from work. I had heard the wind rising strongly from inside the house and I stepped out onto the front porch as Dawn was just getting out of a friend’s car. She pointed up at the leaves swirling in the air as she walked towards me. I saw them swirling against a graying sky.

I finished up in the kitchen and we sat at the table with the leaf flower and began eating at three minutes before six.

Why would I tell you all this? Surely the numbers and the colors don’t mean anything. There’s a coincidence here and there. And there are more beautiful leaves in the world than I have time to count. The leaf flower won’t last long.

Even the friends and neighbors are somewhat coincidental, too, although intention should be counted. And what if I had walked faster or slower? What if I had not rested, watching for a few minutes? What if all these amazing people had not wanted to talk with me? I did not make the elements of this story or order their occurrence by more than leaf or two. The afternoon mostly just happened as afternoons sometimes do.

I can still hear the north wind outside my window tonight – expected to be more than thirty degrees colder tomorrow for the high. Yesterday, I did something because I friend told me I could. I had some colors and a number of friends to work with. The initial question is yours.




Thursday, November 6, 2014

My imagined love


I was walking down the sidewalk,
when I heard a woman’s voice,
she was riding up close behind me,
and then this is what she said:

‘On your right,’ her voice was soft,
and I stepped a half step left,
and just as she passed,
I said to her, ‘you’re all right.’

And then I saw her glance at me,
from behind her dark sunglasses
and then this is what she said to me,
‘You’re fine,’ I saw her sweet lips move.

And then she was away
as she became my new true love.
And now, and alas, then
she peddled out of my life...

Forever is such a short time,
but I couldn’t have loved her more,
had that single, tender moment
turned into aching year-long looks.

She was surely more than alright to me,
And as she told me from her bicycle seat,

I was fine to her.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Pumpkinhead




Pumpkinhead dummy No. 1 sat at the card table just off the sidewalk leading to the front porch. I, with my own pumpkinhead, sat a few giant steps back in the shadows. I moved forward and back throughout the evening, picking my times.

I was just standing behind dummy No. 1, when a smartly dressed woman walked by with a little girl in her Halloween costume and her candy bag in hand. Young daughter’s hand in her young  mother’s, to my eye. The woman turned back toward the two pumpkinheads and she saw me move when she was already on the steps. I saw her smile in the porch light and she called back to a guy out on the sidewalk. “You remember that guy that scared the shit out of me back when ...”

Another large group of parents and kids came up and I couldn’t follow all of them through my eye holes. Then the mother and daughter were standing just ten feet in front of me. The little girl, her head not even as high as my waist, let go of her mother’s hand and stepped boldly towards me.

I crouched to a knee, and pulled my mask away. We were eye to eye. I could have reached my huge hand out and touched her pretty red dress with the white polka dots. She wore matching ears perched on top of her brown hair. Her button of a nose was colored shiny black.

 “I’m a person,” I said, holding my pumpkin head to my heart.

She did this little girl thing where she half-shrugged her shoulders and tilted her head slightly to one side – and she just giggled.

I could have a stayed there looking into her face for the rest of my life, but it doesn’t work that way. After a few moments, in which she explained to me that she was Minnie Mouse, she turned and went back to her mother.

I put my mask back on and backed into the shadows.

I watched her walk down the sidewalk holding her mother’s hand, looking back at me over her shoulder. From that distance, I was little more than a shadow to her eyes. But will she tell her daughter about me one day?

Of course, I also scared or startled quite a lot of other kids tonight. A few mothers. You should have seen that one young woman suddenly turn, her mind and feet not quite her own for a few steps. And there was laughter. I really was something unexpected for a short time in their eyes when I played my part just right, variations on uncertainty all night long. I could see it in their painted faces and hear it in their excited voices. One not so little boy produced a terrific scream. And now there are memories of moments already receding into the shadows.

Two boys from up the street who had seen this show before, called dummy No. 1 ‘Bert’ and walked right up to him and poked him in his stuffed shirt. When I step out of the shadows, they turned and jumped into my monster arms.

As far as I know, I play the double dummy Halloween game as well as anybody. You wait, and you wait, they look carefully at dummy No. 1 - someone says, “He’s not real.” Then suddenly Pumpkinhead dummy No 2 takes two slow, halting steps toward someone or just barely gives a wave. I have a terrific audience.

But I would have sat out all night on this cold All Hallows Eve just to be a person for Minnie Mouse. For a moment, I was as good as I would ever be. And tomorrow I’ll try to be a person for somebody else.